Logo Design Made Simple – A Complete Guide

Professional logo design a requires skill? Really?? It’s just a circle with company’s name written under it… isn’t it?

If you have been in the logo designing industry long enough, you must have heard remarks like the one above. Common man doesn’t understand the huge science behind logo designing.
A logo is not just a symbol, it is an aspect of the economic entity of a brand, it is the identity of a company. A logo’s shape, color and font present the psyche of the mother firm. Only the almighty and we designers know what we go through while creating a logo that is unique, inspiring, easily understandable and memorable. We know and the God knows!

Today I’m sharing those techniques and guidelines for creating effective logos. If you are beginner or an intermediate level designer, this article is a must read for you.

Basics of Logo Design

To make great logos, you do not need great designing skills. What you need is commonsense!

I say commonsense because the first and most important thing you need to figure out for a logo is the purpose of that logo. You need to figure out what is the message this logo should contain? Once you have that figured out, 50% of the work is done.
Most of the newbie designers fail in figuring out the purpose of the logo hence their designs continuously get rejected. This is the step you need to work on the most.

Selecting Fonts, Colors and Shapes

The selection of these elements is solely dependent on the message you want to convey with your logo. Let’s take help from Paul Rand. He is one of the greatest logo designers of all time. He says:

A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it means is more important than what it looks like. The subject matter of a logo can be almost anything.

He adds:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign. A logo does not sell it only identifies. A logo is rarely a description of a business. A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.

So we learn that our usage of colors, fonts and shapes depends on the product or company it is signifying. How edgy can your logo be? How colorful should it be? These and all such questions have the answer lying in the realization of concept of the company.

The Message in the Logo

We have talked about the message in the logo. Let’s take some real examples of logos that have conveyed the message successfully over the years.

Apple Inc. Logo

In the famous apple logo, there’s one bite taken off from the fruit. Can you guess who took that bite? Yes, you are right. This refers to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the “Tree of knowledge”. So the message is that Apple Inc. products are actually fruits from the tree of knowledge. Now that’s quite a message!

Amazon Logo

Such a simple logo it is, but the arrow points from a-to-z. This represents the wide range of products available at Amazon.com. Apart from that, the arrow also adds a smile-like effect

FedEx Logo

FedEx’s logo seems very straightforward but if you look closely, you’ll find that there’s an arrow hidden in the lower part where E meets X. The arrow is pointing towards right that gives the illusion of movement and speed.

For more interesting facts about famous logos, please see brand logos.

Logo Design Process

The graph you are seeing above is designed by Jacob Cass, even though he is a master designer you don’t have to follow his pattern blindly. Every designer discovers his logo design process with time.
You might want to create a make a concept first and do the research afterwards just to fine-tune your concept. You might create a whole other pattern of logo design process. Whatever suits you.

The basic thing is that your logo design process should contain these steps:

I would add another aspect to the logo design. That is versatility. In today’s world, we often need to spice up our logos according to the occasion. Google Doodle is a good example of a versatile logo. Here’s Apple logo timeline and you can see how versatile this logo is.

Sum it Up

It’s getting late so let’s conclude the article.

The juice of today’s article is that the most important step in designing a logo is that you have to immerse yourself in the brand. You need to know the target audience, you need to research the competitors and of course, you need to understand the client’s needs.

Once you have done these things, you can move on to the design part. At this point, you need to make an idea, make a message that your logo will convey. When you create the message, you’ll have the concept. Now comes the part of designing.

Draw the first draft on paper, then grab the keyboard and mouse. You know rest of the drill.

In the end, I want to give you a parameter of my own for judging whether a logo is good enough or not. That parameter is if you see a parody of that logo, would you recognize it? Here’s an example: